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24 NOVEMBER 2012 | DefenseSystems.com
data these systems would deliver."
Yet training and hiring more analysts
and then providing them with state-of-
the-art systems becomes a major quest in
an era of constant belt-tightening. "Fiscal
constraint is the most clear and present
danger that we see on a daily basis to ISR
activities," said A.J. Clark, president of
ermopylae Sciences and Technology, an
Arlington, Va., company that develops ISR
technologies for the military.
Looming budget constraints also cre-
ate another problem. When funding was
abundant, Air Force ISR, like other gov-
ernment intelligence gathering organiza-
tions, was largely free to pursue virtually
any technology that it felt could contribute
to its mission. is is no longer true. "In
today's austere budget environment, we
must reduce our inventory to what is criti-
cal," Brennan said.
e new scal reality is creating a di-
lemma for Air Force ISR. "On the one
hand, older systems that are no longer af-
fordable or sustainable are being phased
out," Brennan said. "On the other hand,
with the current budget concerns, there is
not a lot of money to pursue new initia-
tives and technologies."
e result is that systems that would
normally have reached the end of their ser-
vice life must continue to support war ght-
ers as long as they remain a ordable and
sustainable. "In today's integrated environ-
ment, we will nd new uses for technolo-
gies that we consider older," Brennan said.
"We upgrade, versus just retiring,"
James said. "We just continue to mod-
ernize and upgrade these systems as the
requirements dictate."
LOOKING FORWARD
Budget cuts or not, in a rapidly changing
world Air Force ISR needs to stay nimble
and exible. " e new expeditionary doc-
trine as laid out earlier this year by the
secretary of defense requires that ISR as-
sets be more mobile," Brennan said. " ey
also will need to have a smaller forward-
deployed footprint so that they can be ef-
fectively deployed in regions that will go
'hot' over shorter periods of time."
James sees three major factors challeng-
ing Air Force ISR over the next few years.
"One is sorting out how you move from a
permissive environment of operations like
Afghanistan and Iraq---from an airborne
platform perspective---to a non-permis-
sive environment, what we call an Anti-
Access/Area Denial (A2AD) environ-
ment," he said. "Developing the systems,
tactics, techniques and procedures, all of
those things that we need to do in order to
operate in that A2AD environment, that's
certainly something that we're looking at
and developing capabilities for."
e second challenge is nding enough
money to improve and expand data net-
works and related information-delivery
systems. "We want to make sure we have a
holistic architecture that's put together to
very capably support this ISR enterprise,"
James said. " at's an area that we're
working on."
e third challenge is developing en-
hanced processing, exploitation and dis-
semination tools, despite likely budget
cuts. " e data just continues to grow, but
the number of people we have...does not,"
James said. "We really have to rely on the
tools and technology to manage the data,
to process the data, to fuse the data, and
really to present the analyst with infor-
mation that he can then operate on to
develop his analysis and his conclusions
without spending all his time just trying
to manage data." ■
An MC-12 Liberty reconnais-
sance aircraft lands at the end
of a mission. The Air Force
uses an array of manned and
unmanned aircraft, as well
as space-based platforms, to
feed information into its Air
Operations Centers.